Tony Abbott once introduced Barry O'Farrell to a Liberal Party function with the wounding line: ''He ain't pretty, but he's pretty effective.''

O'Farrell, who had by then begun his ongoing weight loss odyssey, was not pleased.

It was a time before Abbott acquired his ''no gaffes'' verbal discipline. It was also long before he paid O'Farrell the ultimate compliment by mimicking his aim to become the ''infrastructure premier''. Abbott said last year he wanted to be ''an infrastructure prime minister''.

In 2014, the time has come for Abbott to start to make good on the pledge. The government must start tackling Australia's mounting ''infrastructure deficit'' - most likely through unlocking billions of dollars tied up in state-owned assets through privatisation. To borrow the PM's own phrase, the infrastructure issue ain't sexy but Abbott has made it effectively unavoidable.

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Canberra insiders agree infrastructure renewal and, critically, how it is paid for, will be one of the main areas of political combat this year. The scale of the problem, as highlighted by Abbott's infrastructure tsar Rod Eddington this week, is immense.

On the same day Abbott christened himself infrastructure prime minister-in-waiting last year, he unveiled a list of projects the Coalition would pour money into if it won government. The list - almost exclusively road-building projects - included $1.5 billion each for the proposed East-West Link in Melbourne and the O'Farrell government's envisaged WestConnex toll road in NSW.

He promised nearly $20 billion in total to 10 road projects and one freight rail project.

It sounds like big bikkies until some perspective is introduced.

Infrastructure Australia, the government's key adviser in this area - led by Eddington - estimates the nation's pressing infrastructure needs to be at least five times that amount. A minimum $100 billion is needed right now to clear our ''infrastructure deficit'', which grows by the year as the population increases and Australia's present road, rail and port networks creak under their growing workload.

The cost of completing WestConnex and the East-West Link alone will be nearly $30 billion.

IA's advice is for an urgent program of privatisations of public assets and a bold expansion of tolling on transport systems, including existing highways on the east coast.

Unfortunately for Abbott, he doesn't have much to sell if he is to fulfil his pledge to be an infrastructure leader. The slated sale of Medibank Private will raise about $4 billion for a government that has also promised to restore budget surpluses within a decade, at a time when tax receipts are in long-term decline. Even if the unlikely sale of Australia Post went ahead, the government would have just $8 billion in total to redeploy.

Treasurer Joe Hockey has been urged to use the government's financial clout to build infrastructure through debt.

Melbourne University professors Max Corden and John Freebairn argued in a recent paper that debt was the best way to shift the cost of paying for infrastructure to future generations of taxpayers, who are the ones who will benefit from it most.

Hockey has expressed a willingness to consider debt financing but he will find it hard to resist the counter-argument about not saddling future generations with debt.

Hockey's main aim appears to be the creation of a system in which state governments are encouraged to free the capital in assets like ports, water and energy utilities by selling them to private investors.

A source in Canberra close to the infrastructure debate puts it like this: ''[Hockey] keeps getting people coming to him with their hand out for money. The question needs to be, what have you got in your own backyard? How are those assets performing? Would they be better off in private hands? Obviously there are community issues with privatisation but it is pretty basic that the money is there to be unlocked.''

Eddington this week talked up a $64 billion windfall to governments if they gave up the dividend streams and cashed out of 30 assets worth $92 billion that IA has identified as ripe for sale, including the entire NSW electricity transmission and distribution sector, Snowy Hydro and Sydney Water.

A March meeting of the Council of Australian Governments will further negotiate on how Canberra can compensate state governments for the loss of income tax from state-owned firms that are sold.

The Abbott government must also negotiate a maze of political agendas at state level.

In Victoria, where there is less left to sell after the Kennett era, Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews has promised to swiftly sell the Port of Melbourne if Labor is elected over the Napthine government.

IA wants to see Victoria sell the Melbourne, South East, City West and Yarra Valley Water businesses and the state's stake in the Snowy Hydro scheme.

In NSW, Labor, which tore itself apart six years ago over Morris Iemma's bid to sell the state's electricity sector, will oppose the potential $25 billion privatisation when it comes back on the agenda. O'Farrell has promised to seek a mandate from voters, setting any sale back to at least 2015 but likely beyond.

IA national infrastructure co-ordinator Michael Deegan said he supported O'Farrell's sober approach to what would be the single biggest sale on the group's wish list. ''Some people have said 'just sell it', but I think they are doing the right thing. Public trust in this area has been the missing ingredient,'' he said.

IA has held up the NSW government's sale of Port Botany and Port Kembla as the new benchmark for privatisations. The deal, lauded by the financial press, reaped a higher than expected $5 billion but it was the salesmanship of Treasurer Mike Baird that may be its enduring legacy.

Every time Baird spoke of the impending sale he reminded voters that every dollar raised after debts had been repaid would be funnelled into the state government's investment fund, Restart NSW, which is financing infrastructure projects such as WestConnex.

It seems the public is less afraid of state selloffs when the carrot of a quicker run to work is dangled in front of them.

Baird is now leading the group of state treasurers negotiating on compensation for dividends that would be lost to the state.

Both sides of federal politics agree the big rebuild must start if the nation is to keep prospering after the mining boom. Opposition infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese said this week that he was ''no ideologue'' when it comes to privatising public assets to pay for new infrastructure.

But Labor has drawn an early line in the sand against putting new tolls on existing roads to finance new roads - something that business and IA are urging.

Albanese, who ran the infrastructure portfolio in government, said Abbott is walking away from his pledge to ''put cranes in the sky'' by relying on the states to do the heavy lifting.

''Tony Abbott has mimicked Barry O'Farrell in more ways than one - a lot of rhetoric before the election and not much action after,'' he said.

Albanese said the Coalition's commitment on roads were all in Labor's budget bar the East-West Link, and that Abbott has effectively reduced spending by walking away from Commonwealth involvement in any urban public transport projects.